


perchance to dream

by RoamingSignals



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Modern Magic, Temporary Character Death, day dream mv, general pretention, implied chronic illness, not very romantic just kind of weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24799636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoamingSignals/pseuds/RoamingSignals
Summary: This too is real — the stains on the drywall, the fading of the carpet, the painting on the wall. This too is unreal — the storm brewing, the light flickering, the sun missing. Johnny waits politely for a cloud to pass before lifting the lantern and padding into the hallway.There is a person sitting in Johnny’s kitchen.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 23
Kudos: 107





	perchance to dream

**Author's Note:**

> this is weird and sad and based on the day dream mv thank you for your time i promise i'll write more porn or whatever
> 
> thanks to appia and any who looked this over for me. posted on twt also \o/

Johnny wakes up in his own room and yet it is neither his own room nor is he truly awake.

His eyes open and the sun hasn’t risen. There is no sun beaming in through his curtains, just a subtle blue light like chlorine storms. The air ripples. Johnny is not sure there is a sun to rise in this space, but that is a thought for Johnny once he is back in his own room. The Johnny that is here does not find it unusual.

There are clouds — not outside in the chlorine storm but inside, floating around his room, like they’re trying to hide from the rain they haven’t yet created. A sweet yellow light glows, lightning that hasn’t been released. They drift lazily by, angry but not yet violent, hooked on the feeling but not overflowing.

Johnny sits up. His head is clear. His hand reaches for the lantern at his bedside table like he has done it a million times before. Perhaps, in this room, he has.

His bare feet are cool on the carpet. It feels very real, grainy and not particularly soft, perhaps in need of a vacuum. There are other things that are real. The photograph of his parents on his side table is real. The lukewarm, half-full glass is real and the glasses beside it are real. The fact that he doesn’t need the glasses is unreal. The way the mirror is spotless is unreal.

Johnny looks at his hands and, if he were in his own room, he would wonder if he himself were real. In this room he does not question it.

There are warps in the floorboards and clouds by his shoulders. He raises the lantern and steps into the hallway.

Despite the lack of windows the blue light swims in through the cracks. Johnny waits politely for a nimbus to pass before lifting the lantern and padding into the hallway.

This too is real — the stains on the drywall, the fading of the carpet, the painting on the wall. This too is unreal — the storm brewing, the light flickering, the sun missing. Johnny walks forward.

There is a person sitting in Johnny’s kitchen.

They are crossed-legged atop the counter, feet folded underneath. They do not move. Their back is turned to the doorway, and Johnny’s steps make the floorboards creak with the weight — real — but still the figure does not move. The clouds float around them, making room.

This is the first thing Johnny looks at and cannot immediately decide whether it is real or not. This is worth noting, as nothing else had made Johnny pause. There are no thoughts about whether things belong in this space, there is only what is and what is not. Johnny is not sure this person is either.

Johnny rounds the room and comes in front of the figure. There are no features to discern or recognize, and there is nothing to tell Johnny whether they are real or not in this place beyond the obvious irregularities. He lifts his lantern and the light is warm over a sight that is chilling.

They have no face.

It should be alarming in a way that nothing yet has been. It is not alarming. Johnny is not shocked. He is…

His heart beats.

The figure waits patiently, unmoving, until Johnny is standing so close their bodies could brush. There is a subtle lift of the chin. Their hands are sitting still in the space between their legs, gently clasped. They wait.

Johnny tries to speak but has no voice.

Those gentle hands lift, hesitant, and Johnny knows that they are reaching to cup his face before they move an inch. He is familiar with this touch — that makes it real. A warm palm cups his cheek, thumb smoothing over skin. The other hand flits over his chest, _thump thump thump_. Johnny feels himself drawn closer and allows himself to be drawn. He closes his eyes.

Their foreheads touch.

It is a long and sorely-missed moment. In some indescribable way Johnny’s chest aches, lurching, and the clouds around them halt like the very air is holding its breath. Johnny is holding his breath. The figure breathes in.

Far away there is a bell.

For a split second the lantern in Johnny’s hand is too heavy, and pain in his head is splitting, and the hand on his shirt grips too tightly.

By the time the bell is done ringing, the storm has started and Johnny is not there for the first fall of rain. He opens his eyes and the sun hasn’t risen, street lights harsh though the blinds. He wakes up in his bed and feels he is missing something.

He is.

He falls back to sleep.

☁️☁️☁️

“Am I forgetting something?” Johnny asks the sky.

“Do you have your keys?” Doyoung asks.

“Yes.”

“And your wallet?”

Johnny pats his pockets and feels the red half-broken leather monstrosity adding another inch to his waistline. “Yes.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I’m forgetting something.”

Doyoung tilts his head to the side, swinging his lanyard around like a pendulum. “Well, remember it quickly or I’m leaving without you.” The clock is ticking and they are going to be late to their meeting.

“I’m coming,” Johnny says, pulling on his suit jacket. His skin is wrong. “If it was important I wouldn’t have forgotten it.”

The statement feels untrue. The clock is ticking. They leave for their meeting.

☁️☁️☁️

Johnny wakes up in the room that is not his and remembers that it is not his but is not sure whether or not he is himself.

The lantern is right where he left it.

His covers are wet. The carpet is wet, mushy under his feet, too much water to retain. There is green growing out of wood. The clouds are pure white, already long past angry, and they swirl around Johnny’s head as if in greeting. Johnny’s skin is damp and he is not real enough to shiver.

In the kitchen a figure still sits. It is the same figure, in the same place with their back turned. There is dirt on the counter in small mounds, daisies growing out of marbled granite. The white cabinets are streaked with mud.

Johnny rounds the counters and holds up his lantern. The warm light hits smooth skin and a featureless face. There are smears of mud where eyes should sit, dark and guessing, not quite centered, a gross facsimile. There are streaks down cheeks like tear tracks, dirty brown.

The figure holds out a daisy with a shaking hand.

Johnny sets down his lantern quietly. It is nestled among thorn and thistle — not everything is beautiful, but it impossibly grows. The hand with the daisy does not move. Johnny does not take it.

He reaches forward, slow and searching. The moment fingers touch the flesh of the person’s cheek they flinch and the daisy wavers, but they have no mouth to speak or eyes to see. Johnny wipes up grainy dirt and saltwater with his thumb.

The room sighs.

Johnny smears mud and feels lashes under his fingertips. Eyes open and they are beautiful and terrified.

Far away there is a bell.

He wakes up with dirt under his fingernails and a daisy tucked into the collar of his shirt. He cries for half an hour.

☁️☁️☁️

“You haven’t drawn in such a long time,” Doyoung says, looking at the doodles in the corner of Johnny’s files. “What caused this?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny says, flushed red to the roots of his hair.

There are pretty eyes drawn in all his margins.

“It’s not very professional.” Doyoung marks red through text and smiles at Johnny. “They’re nice, though.”

“Yes.” Johnny agrees.

“I’m the only one who sees these so it’s not like it matters.”

Johnny feels like it matters. There is red under BB cream from sobbing his heart into his hands. That matters. He flicks his pen in the curve of a lash and smudges the ink with his thumb. A set of eyes he does not get to see and yet sees over and over.

Doyoung squints at him, at the blue ink fingerprints. “Where did you get these? They’re the same pair.”

“From a dream.” Johnny wipes his hands on a napkin and still manages to get ink on his face, more blue. “I can’t remember what happened. I think it was sad.” He is sad. He is forgetting something. He forgets so many things that his head aches. He feels his pockets for his keys and his giant wallet. He stole his pen back from Taeil earlier. He is a complete person without any missing parts.

“All dreams are a little sad,” Doyoung muses. “They are too short and immediately forgotten.” He laughs, waving his hand over ink eyes until it dries. “If your obsessive drawings are the only way they live forever, so be it.” When he presses his fingers down the picture does not move. His hands are clean.

So be it.

☁️☁️☁️

There is no lantern by his bed today, in this room. His hand reaches for it by rote and grabs empty air.

Oh.

He rubs his hands over his eyes. The clouds are thin and wispy today. The curtains are drawn. He gets out of bed and pushes thick brocade aside. There is only blue mist beyond the foggy window. When Johnny breathes upon cold glass he sees a large cluster of tallies. He adds another one, just for fun.

Hands empty, Johnny walks to the kitchen.

The figure is sitting, once again with their back to the doorway, legs drawn up on the countertop. There are no more plants or mud or dirt, although their shirt is stained and sticks to skin in odd places, damp. The clouds are barely here. Johnny wonders whether it has rained since he left.

Johnny rounds the counter. He has no lantern to lift.

It sits between the person’s legs, in white-knuckled hands. The metal is no longer brown, now a harsh russet red. The light is too weak to spread beyond the figure’s lap. The glass has blackened in spots.

When Johnny looks into that smooth face he sees warm brown eyes, but they are not like the ones another Johnny (the same Johnny, maybe, if this is real) has been inking in his margins. These eyes are devastated and devastating.

There is rust on tan skin. The handle of the lantern groans as they lift it up. It is the first sound Johnny has heard, beyond the thunder and the creaking floorboards. The dismal light is held up to Johnny’s face, shifts to the left and right and all the planes in between. Johnny’s eyes do not waver from that face emerging.

With gentle fingers there is pressure against Johnny’s mouth, a touch that lingers. There is something ruining about the way this being places those same fingers against their own mouth, when lips should be, immediately after. Eyes clench shut.

They shake their head, covering their eyes with their free hand and holding the lantern out to Johnny, as if Johnny is the one who needs it.

Johnny does not take it. It’s dark in here. Some light is better than none.

Far away there is a bell.

Anger flares as those eyes open, glaring behind Johnny’s shoulder.

Johnny wants to turn and look but does not have the time. He wakes up in his room and feels too empty to sob. Perhaps he is also angry.

☁️☁️☁️

“What are these?”

“I don’t know,” Doyoung says, not looking up from his work.

Johnny is looking for another pen at the back of his desk drawer (Taeil has stolen his again and he will not be getting it back) and his fingers have brushed across thick plastic. It rattles. He pulls out a small bottle. The label is worn and unreadable.

“They look like medication,” Doyoung offers after the silence lingers and he’s forced to glance up. He only looks for a moment, sees Johnny frowning at red plastic and white paper. “Did your secretary leave it?”

“In my drawer?” Johnny scoffs.

“Well, maybe not.”

If Johnny looks closely, he sees a gray-black smudge — _o n Ju Suh_ he makes out. He rubs his thumb across the warbled letters and wonders if that’s why the label has disappeared in the first place. Maybe it is something else.

He holds them up and looks at Doyoung. “Was I sick?” he asks no one but himself.

“Sick?” Doyoung knits his eyebrows. Finally he puts down his pen and reaches for the bottle, giving the white pills and gentle shake. “I don’t...think so.” He does not sound sure.

Johnny feels sick.

“No…” Doyoung blinks into the distance, beyond Johnny and out the window and into some other place for a memory. “No...you were. You were sick. I remember picking up your prescription.”

“Why couldn’t I get it myself?” Johnny asks.

Doyoung sets the bottle down atop a stack of papers, like the weight of it is enough to hold them down. “I don’t remember.” He clicks the top of his pen and slashes red. “It must not have been too bad though, if neither of us remember.”

Johnny swallows. “You’re right.” But the sight of the bottle unnerves him. He plucks it up and settles in back in the shadows of his drawer before closing it tight.

☁️☁️☁️

Johnny wakes up in the liminal space of his other bedroom and the wind is fierce.

The curtains whip and the pillows have long since been thrown from the bed. The photograph of Johnny’s bedside table has fallen over, hiding smiling faces. The clouds swirl, dark and powerful and without direct malice but oh, they are selfish. The wind will rage because it is time to rage, regardless of what is pulled out by the root.

There is no lantern tonight. It is difficult to see. The blue haze is heavy and there is no promise of lightning to light up the space in front of him. Johnny’s shirt ripples around him, tangling arm and leg and footfall. He covers his face with his arms. It is hard to move forward.

He moves forward.

Even without light these are halls he has walked a million and one times. He trudges forward and the pathway is right. The wind is strong enough he feels he might fly. Rain starts to fall and it feels like a hammer, or a punishment. Retribution but senseless and without focus.

There is a boy in the kitchen with an ancient lantern in his hands.

Johnny’s hands cling to the doorway, pulling himself forward against the center of the storm. His breathing is ragged and there is water in his eyes. He can barely see, but here is the eye where things are silent and still.

The boy turns to greet him and Johnny recognizes those eyes. They are sad, surprised, strained. There are some things he does not recognize — a soft mouth, a sloped nose, a bittersweet smile.

He is beautiful.

He is so beautiful that the shock of it makes Johnny lose his battle against the storm. His hands slip and he is blown backwards. He does not hear a bell above the raging but that does not mean it does not ring.

In the kitchen a figure waves goodbye.

Johnny calls out of work when he wakes up. His head reels and he is so dizzy he cannot see. He goes back to sleep and does not dream.

☁️☁️☁️

“It is a good likeness.”

It is a wonderful likeness, although Johnny is not aware enough to see that it’s so. He barely remembers eyes and mouth and nose and believes he is making up the spaces in between. In reality, holding the portrait up beside its subject matter would reveal every perfect detail, but there is no face to compare it to.

Johnny looks up at the man who has sat at his table. It is a beautiful man with delicate features and a croissant in his hand. He has blue hair that looks silly in the mundanity of the coffee shop and a red shirt that is too warm for the weather. He picks at his pastry and leaves crumbs along the table.

Carefully, the stranger picks up a sheet of thick sketching paper and pours over the features. “You should have forgotten him completely — that was the deal.” He sighs, taking a bite of his breakfast and setting the paper down. “There is so much longing built up in him, it’s straining things. This generation is so selfish.”

“That doesn’t sound like him,” Johnny notes.

The man smiles. “Sound like who?”

Johnny cannot remember.

In the dim light of the early morning, the stranger hands Johnny a business card and half a croissant. Johnny tucks it into his pocket beside a long-dead daisy and doesn’t think about it until he needs to.

☁️☁️☁️

Johnny wakes up in a room that now feels like his own and finds it ruined.

The paintings on the walls are askew, glass from frames is scattered around on the floor. Linens are tossed around and there are holes in the comforter. The air smells like ozone. The paint on the walls is chipped and the curtain rod has fallen to the floor. The mist outside the window is a vibrant blue and makes the room hazy. There are no clouds in sight.

Green grows everywhere. Ivy spins up bedposts. There is foliage wrapped around the door so tightly that forcing it open requires Johnny sacrificing his shoulder to make it into the hallway. He stumbles. The rain has brought a jungle, and the air is heavy. Thick and muggy. Johnny had to climb over root and gnarled limb to make it to the kitchen.

The boy is facing him today.

He still has those warm eyes and that perfect mouth and that dread about him. The lantern is broken at his hip. He holds out his hand.

When Johnny takes it it feels more right than anything else.

_What is your name?_ he asks, but the boy tilts his head to the side and Johnny knows that his voice does not work and has never worked here.

The beautiful boy says something in turn, and Johnny can not hear him but he feels the squeeze of his hand, and when he draws this body close he feels the warmth, and he decides that this figure is truly real. There is a desperate hand clawing in Johnny’s hair and when they pull apart the boy is crying, swiping angrily at his face like he is ashamed for weeping.

It doesn’t matter. Johnny pulls him close against and tucks his head under his chin. He rocks back and forth, a slow-dance as a lullaby. The body wracks, although Johnny cannot feel a heartbeat. No matter how hard the breathing Johnny cannot hear him, but no matter how quiet he is real and can be felt.

The bell does not ring for quite some time. Johnny cannot help but feel like this lingering moment is deserved.

☁️☁️☁️

“Kim Jungwoo.”

Johnny reads the name on the business card aloud with a heavy heart and something like determination turned delicate and brutal, like an open wound.

The man — Jungwoo — stands in front of him, unashamed. He has a green patterned umbrella open, despite the clear skies and the busy street, but no one seems to question its purpose. Jungwoo himself certainly seems comfortable with the shadow it casts. He smiles softly. “You called?”

“You’re the one who rings the bell,” Johnny says, and it sounds like an accusation although Johnny cannot imagine there is malice in the tinkling sound whether it cuts time short or not.

“No.” Jungwoo twirls his umbrella. “That would be a friend of mine. I just tell him when.”

Johnny came to this man prepared to beg. He is not sure that he has to, or that begging would work. “Let’s make a deal.”

“For a man who no longer exists?”

“He exists,” Johnny argues. There is dirt in his bed and a daisy in his pocket. “He’s real.”

Jungwoo raises an eyebrow. “He is real because he is unexpectedly stubborn.” He clicks his tongue. “He entered his deal willingly. His continued existence is a surprise to us both, I think.”

Among the bustle on the street, Johnny looks at the passing faces and tries to find the one he remembers desperately wanting. He purses his lips and levels a look towards the crossroads. “I find it hard to believe a creature like you ever being surprised.”

“A creature?” Jungwoo laughs. “Don’t think so lowly of me.”

“Let’s make a deal,” Johnny says again.

Jungwoo grins with sharp teeth. “Alright, human,” he simpers. “But my prices aren’t easy, even if they’re fair.”

Johnny sets his shoulders. “I don’t need easy.”

“No.” Jungwoo twirls his umbrella as the rain clouds roll in. “People like you never do.”

☁️☁️☁️

Johnny wakes up in his own room and knows that this is his own room and he is not dreaming.

Everything is indiscernible from the room he spends his waking hours in — no clouds forms, no storms roll. The strange blue light is still floating over the apartment but the haze is gone. Like the first time and every time after, Johnny’s head is clear.

His hand reaches for the lantern at his bedside table like he has done a million times before.

A boy sits on the kitchen counter, feet swinging against the cupboards. He is wary as Johnny rounds the corner but his eyes are not sad. He tilts his chin up as Johnny moves to stand in front of him, in the open space between his legs.

“Hello, Donghyuck,” Johnny says.

“Hello, Johnny,” Donghyuck says.

Johnny sets his lantern down on the spotless countertop. Donghyuck’s hand pushes it to the side, out of their way, and Johnny leans into his space as he has a million and one times. His hands come up, one behind Donghyuck’s neck and one under his chin, and sweetly they kiss.

Donghyuck is more real in this moment than any other in Johnny’s memory. He is warm and pliant under Johnny’s hands. He is demanding under Johnny’s mouth. He eats hungrily the fruit that Johnny has given, nipping at Johnny’s bottom lip and threading his hands behind Johnny’s waist, pulling closer. It is desperate and devastating, but gentle like a sigh.

It is near heart-breaking to pull away. Johnny does so with a Herculean amount of effort and takes the opportunity to count the moles on Donghyuck’s face, calculate the angle of Donghyuck’s nose, note the contours of Donghyuck’s jaw. He looks and looks and looks and by the time Donghyuck smiles lazily at him he thinks, _truly I never forgot._

His hands are warm on tan skin, slipping under Donghyuck’s shirt. Johnny bought him this shirt in what was another lifetime, before the sickness and the devilish deals and walls between them.

Donghyuck kisses Johnny again and Johnny slips into old habits, letting Donghyuck have his way.

“We don’t have forever here,” Johnny says, kissing the spot beneath Donghyuck’s jawline.

“We never do.” Donghyuck is so sad. He twirls a piece of Johnny’s hair in a way that aches with familiarity. Johnny cannot imagine ever thinking this boy was not real.

Gently, Johnny curls their fingers together. “We can have forever somewhere else.”

Donghyuck holds his breath. He smells like ozone and rain.

Johnny picks up his lantern and kisses the heel of Donghyuck’s palm. “Do you trust me?” he asks. _Trust me not to forget, ever again, ‘til death do us part_.

There is no hesitation. “Of course.” Donghyuck slips off the kitchen counter and plants bare feet on old tile.

The lantern in Johnny’s hand is bright and beaming. Donghyuck’s hand in his is warm and right. Johnny kisses his forehead, savoring. Half his heart beats. If he were to put his palm to Donghyuck’s chest he would feel the two halves beat in tandem.

Johnny raises the light and leads Donghyuck out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> _To die, to sleep.  
>  To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,  
> For in that sleep of death what dreams may come  
> When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,_


End file.
